I know, I know, you guys must be thinking: not another thread about the minion group rules! But I still had some thoughts on it after reading through previous threads and other google results that I wanted to share with you.

I understand the reasoning of combining low-level adversaries together. It forms a stronger unit that is harder to kill and it is easier to manage (one threshold pool and one attack roll). I also understand the rules, stating that the soak does not add up and one of the members of the group dies after the a single member's threshold has been exceeded. I have some great difficulties however to understand these rules from a mechanical and narrative point of view.

Let's use an example and compare 3 separate storm troopers versus a group from a mechanical point of view.

How much can they take:

When you have them work separately, they all have separate soak values/wound thresholds. This makes it very hard to take them down because you have to do 3*(wound threshold + 1 + soak) worth of damage. You will also be inefficient, because you might have extra damage on one storm trooper that is lost, because he's already down. So for storm troopers with 5 WT and 5 soak this makes a minimum of 33 damage. When they are together however, you can hit them all at once, only counting the soak once. You will be very efficient, because you can damage more than one storm trooper at a time, and even add 5 wounds for a critical hit. The minimum damage is reduced to 1*(3*wound threshold+1+soak), which is 21 in our example. It is much lower than the previous minimum and on average you will even be much closer to this minimum than in the other case.

How much damage can they deal:

Storm troopers that attack separately will do, if roll is successful, 3*(base damage + successes). When together they only do 1*(base damage + successes). Although the roll is upgraded in this case, so that there is a higher net result of successes/advantages, I think the net damage/advantage will still be lower in most cases.

From a narrative point of view this makes it really difficult for me to understand why minions would group up in the first place. It's logical that you are close and in formation, you are more likely to be hit. This is reflected in the mechanics, by only using one soak value. However, it would seem logical to me that their attack frequency would remain the same and the average damage dealt would go up. This, it seems, is not reflected in the mechanics. You have one attack with on average more damage than a single attack of one minion, but the average damage in total goes down. Would't it be better to have them add up their attacks, and give them a boost die on top or something?

Another narrative aspect that bothers me is when damaged minions would want to team up. Suppose you have 3 separated storm troopers that have 3 wounds each. They want to team up to increase their chance of success or make a final stand. By using the group rule, they will become weaker, first because the damage they can deal and take goes down, but on top of that one storm trooper will suddenly die because the total wounds exceed the wound threshold of one storm trooper.

I'm very interested to hear your thoughts/comments on this.

You keep saying that the problems are with the narrative aspect of the minion rules but you are actually talking pure mechanics when referencing soak/wound values.

Well, by narrative aspect I mean how the mechanics reflect the combat situation. So when the mechanics do not reflect the combat situation (like a group of minions working together presumably being tougher to handle than scattered minions), it would be a narrative problem too.

Then don't group them. Minion groups aren't about squeezing the most out of the mechanics. They are about streamlining the mechanics to create a certain narrative. One that has player groups taking many low tiered minions and dropping them in droves at times. But nothing stops you from running each minion individually. You'll probably roll more for the same effect, but if you are cool with that then do it.

Regarding minions and your post.

1) As mouthymerc said, you are not obliged to group them, you can treat them as separate individuals. You will have to do more rolls.

2) If you don't group them, they only roll characteristic dice. This means they won't be able to hit PCs which a certain amount of defensive talents like dodge or side step.

3) If you group them, you start rolling proficiency (yellow) dice, which means triumphs, which means critics (and more), which means a real threat for the PCs.

My view

Minions don't have to be engaged to each other to be a group. I've had a group if minions pin down the players in a ravine firing from all sides.

Grenades can still be useful, but would require some narrative interpretation. For instance if the players in the ravine threw a grenade at a seperated minion group and activated the blast quality doing enough damage to take out a couple of minions i would say the grenade caused a section the ledge to give out, etc.

Please correct me if I am wrong, however from what I can tell the questions you have posted reflect the following:

Mechanically, minions are disadvantaged by working together, so why would they?

I mean no disrespect when I say that minions have no knowledge of game mechanics. Simply put, as "characters" (NPC's in this case) they have no knowledge of the mechanics governing them. Yes their are mechanical representations for beneficial actions for them (cover, aiming, etc.) but, to quote a friend of mine, they have no ranks in the language Gamespeak.

One could of course make the "yes, but a character is going to know that if they try x it will be really hard for them, etc." argument, and depending on a given players preference there is some truth to the statement. However, as with many things in most RPGs the mechanics governing their use are an abstraction to simulate the desired level of cinematic combat.

That aside if you feel like runing individual combatants make your stormies rivals instead of minion groups. It will probably slow down your combats a bit, but if the play group is ok with it that's fine.

I think you are completely missing the narrative point of minions. Minions are in the game to allow the heroes to be heroic. To allow them to take down lots of stormtroopers,etc like you see in the movie.

What you seem to be thinking is completely mechanical and trying to min/max that has nothing to do with a narrative story. I told my players from the being this isn't DnD it's a 60 second round not a 6 second round. You are firing back and forth the whole time, just like in the movies. The attack roll represents an opening that happened during that 60 seconds of back and forth.

The reason I mention this is it seems a lot of people on the boards seem to be stuck inside the box of other systems and can't get past the 1 roll = 1 blaster shot so how could I possibly take out 4 stormtroopers? 1 roll = whatever the narrative dice narrate. If I have a player that rolls high and critically hits a group of stormtroopers with high success. I don't narrate 1 shot ripping through all 4 of them (you could), I tell him how he pops up from behind cover to lay down an impressive a barrage of blaster fire striking the first trooper in the head (critical), the second trooper twice in the chest, and so one.

The awesome thing about this system is 1 roll does not mean 1 anything, it can mean so much more.

So probably my interpretation of the group rules as a mechanic to simulate an attack formation is wrong and I should rather use it to simplify the larger scale battles when it would take too much time to roll all the attacks separately. To simulate an attack formation, it might be better to keep the attacks separate and give them a boost die or something, so that the difficulty increase is really seen by the PC's. In response to Yepesnopes, I agree that there are advantages with the upgraded rolls like critical hits, but I still don't think it balances out with the decrease in soak and attack rate when you compare minions separately to the same minions in group (which is a comparison I shouldn't take too far, according to the replies here).

To illustrate my thoughts, here is an experience I had with the group rules. At some point in the beginner game adventure there is an attack of 2 groups of 3 storm troopers, where the second group arrives after 1 round or something. My group of 4 PC's had quite good initiative rolls and could get the first group down before it could even react and before the second group arrived. The second group then arrived and also went down without much trouble, whereas it was supposed to be a really tricky situation. So then I thought, well, it would probably be a lot tougher if each storm trooper would attack separately, having its own attack roll and soak value. For me personally it would also seem more appropriate cinematically, because there would be more attack(-roll)s flying around, possibly injuring all the PC's instead of getting a critical hit on one PC.

But then again, it probably depends on the situation and how you want to play the scene.

As Tenrousai said, it's not like the individual Stormtroopers "know" they are in a minion group.

It's not like they *choose* to only shoot once per round versus each firing individually.

It's just a game mechanic designed to represent the very common situation in Star Wars stories of having loads of Stormtroopers, bounty hunters, thugs, etc, firing at the heroes.

My view on the minion mechanics is that the less experienced your party is, the smaller the minion groups should be. In my case in the beginner game, the group I had was small (2 players). They chose to run from the Stormtroopers. A minion group of 3 clearly outclassed them, and one of my guys was hit with a blaster bolt that nearly took him out. Had they stayed to try and shoot it out with them, it would not have gone well.

On the other hand, very experienced players who have amassed say up to 500xp would need to have larger minion groups to make it a credible challenge that they might get hit.

Something to consider for the stormtrooper example is give the minion squad a sergeant to command them. Opens up some tactical options

It makes perfect sense from a narrative, cinematic point of view.

Seems like your issue is with the mechanics, and how much of the mechanics the NPCs would know in-setting, which is to say "none." The in-setting PCs don't think in terms of Soak and Boost dice and Setbacks even if the IRL humans who control them do. The in-setting NPCs shouldn't either.

It makes perfect sense from a narrative, cinematic point of view.

Seems like your issue is with the mechanics, and how much of the mechanics the NPCs would know in-setting, which is to say "none." The in-setting PCs don't think in terms of Soak and Boost dice and Setbacks even if the IRL humans who control them do. The in-setting NPCs shouldn't either.

Of course, since the players DO consider such things, it makes sense for the GM to do likewise.

If everything that the mechanics govern is unknown to the NPC's and therefore combat mechanics/wound threshold and soak values changes are unimportant, we can also just flip a coin for everything. I'm talking about the consistency between the in-setting combat situation and the rules applying to them. I think consistency shouldn't necessarily imply min/maxing by the way.

It makes perfect sense from a narrative, cinematic point of view.

Seems like your issue is with the mechanics, and how much of the mechanics the NPCs would know in-setting, which is to say "none." The in-setting PCs don't think in terms of Soak and Boost dice and Setbacks even if the IRL humans who control them do. The in-setting NPCs shouldn't either.

Of course, since the players DO consider such things, it makes sense for the GM to do likewise.

Maybe, but the GM shouldn't be playing a mook group on the same intelligence or thoughtfulness level as he'd play a Nemesis.

"Flip a coin" sounds like a strawman to me.

I made a bounty hunter who was a combat monster with a budget of 400 xp. Defense 3 vs. ranged + 2 ranks of dodge, and soak 7 while on offense he had a highly modified heavy blaster rifle with jury rigged to autofire with one advantage.

vs. 5 stormtroopers in a minion group, if he wins initiative, they're almost certainly all dead before they get to shoot.

If they shoot first, at close range they have a good chance of hitting him, but soak 7.
At medium range they had an ok chance of hitting him.
At long range they had a poor chance of hitting him.

Separated, though he would likely only kill 2 or 3 instead of all 5, the stormtroopers would have a very poor chance of hitting him even at close range, and even if one did hit, would likely only do 3 points of damage because of soak.

All you would accomplish by separating the minions, in all likelihood, is make the fight have more rolls for what would be the same result. Longer fights are not necessarily tougher fights. Protracted Battles tend to become boring. There's even a rule in the game for resolving combat with a single roll, if victory is assured.

Against a tough target like an experienced PC, grouping minions is the only way to give them a decent chance to hit. Against a group with hundreds of xp you might need multiple medium-size (4-5) minion groups to pose a threat. Imagine making a dozen combat rolls in this system though! With a d20 system you can throw multiple d20s at a time and multiple attacks can be made relatively quickly. In this system, each combat roll is several dice and must be interpreted. In addition, each minion must be shot at individually, further slowing combat on top of having several unnecessary rolls per round. It simply isn't worth it to use minions as individuals. It will slow combat down to a crawl and your players will get bored.

If you arent using the minions as intended, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. The minion system is a great evolution

So probably my interpretation of the group rules as a mechanic to simulate an attack formation is wrong and I should rather use it to simplify the larger scale battles when it would take too much time to roll all the attacks separately. To simulate an attack formation, it might be better to keep the attacks separate and give them a boost die or something, so that the difficulty increase is really seen by the PC's. In response to Yepesnopes, I agree that there are advantages with the upgraded rolls like critical hits, but I still don't think it balances out with the decrease in soak and attack rate when you compare minions separately to the same minions in group (which is a comparison I shouldn't take too far, according to the replies here).

To illustrate my thoughts, here is an experience I had with the group rules. At some point in the beginner game adventure there is an attack of 2 groups of 3 storm troopers, where the second group arrives after 1 round or something. My group of 4 PC's had quite good initiative rolls and could get the first group down before it could even react and before the second group arrived. The second group then arrived and also went down without much trouble, whereas it was supposed to be a really tricky situation. So then I thought, well, it would probably be a lot tougher if each storm trooper would attack separately, having its own attack roll and soak value. For me personally it would also seem more appropriate cinematically, because there would be more attack(-roll)s flying around, possibly injuring all the PC's instead of getting a critical hit on one PC.

But then again, it probably depends on the situation and how you want to play the scene.

Have you had run any other encounters wih stormtroopers and your group? What types of characters do you have? Do they have a heavy combat focus?

I would advise you to ask your characters to run a few example encounters, like training sims. vary the numbers and sizes of the minion groups and rival mixes you throw at them and see if the experience changes for you.